


tending fires

by filia_noctis, toujours_nigel



Series: Sex and Cedarwood [3]
Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: Casual Sex, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, metamours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16329008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/pseuds/filia_noctis, https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: The boy danced and was beautiful, watched in the shadows as he put Alexander to bed and offered no help, marched with them east to Baktria as the country grew warmer. He had his work, and greater concerns pressing in.





	tending fires

Hephaistion found his way into three arguments that week, excessive even by his own standards set as they were by a tumultuous summer in Mieza when he had felt it a matter of honour to fight anyone who spoke to him of Alexander. Ptolemy thought it bespoke excess, Philotas insanity, Alexander an insult.

“Do you think I can’t protect him,” Alexander said, incredulous and beginning to be indignant, the fifth time Hephaistion attempted to explain why he thought it a necessary thing to have Bagoas taught the rudiments of handling weaponry.

“I think he is often in your rooms alone, and not well-liked.” He had not said though it was true, that he’d rather Alexander not be distracted if an assassin managed to find his way past the guards and soldiers. It could only hurt matters.

Alexander opened his mouth to complain, and shut it again, frowningly thoughtful. “You care for him.”

“He’s yours, and I haven’t the time to worry about him myself.”

“He has a horror of the pages, you can’t have him trained where they might see,” Alexander said, and Hephaistion withheld a smile with difficulty.

“I’ll have a suitable space found,” he promised instead, putting amusement and triumph aside.

“He has a room,’’ Alexander said, “where he dances. Nothing near it is in use, and it has doors that close well.”

“If he can dance in it, it should serve,” Hephaistion agreed, and turned to go. He had lingered when the others had left, the old habit easily resumed and reassuring.

“Thank you,” Alexander said, and nothing else, no attempt to keep him longer or take him into the inner room with the bed waiting.

In the corridor he saw Bagoas waiting, eyes on his feet and pretending ignorance of the pages waiting at the door. It felt a great violation, that he knew how the boy’s shoulders looked beneath his clothes, the milkiness of his skin, the slender beauty of his body.

**~*~**

In the next week he learnt more of Bagoas than in all the time past. The camp had swallowed the boy without much of a hiccup, and Alexander, growing interested, had spoken of him as he spoke of anything that gave him joy: without disguise but with such restraint as feared the envy of listening gods. Xanthos, irritated about having to sacrifice his free hours and bewildered by his reluctant student, spoke unbridled.

“He pretended he doesn’t know how to hold a knife, when we’ve all seen him dance with two.”

“He said he only dances for the king.”

“He looked surprised when I said you were my uncle. Why else would I have agreed to something so fruitlessly exhausting?”

“Perhaps,” said Hephaistion, “because you’re a page in the royal household, and the king wishes this done?”

“No,” said Xanthos thoughtfully, “I don’t believe that’s a cogent reason.”

The next evening he confirmed his standing as the most impudent of Hephaistion’s sisters’ children by asking with every appearance of gravity, “Do you think they cut eunuchs down to a woman’s shape?”

“Where do you think I would have gained knowledge of it,” Hephaistion asked, for the pleasure of watching the boy flush dully red.

But Xanthos only shook his head and said, “There must be others of his kind about the place, and if not you have more to do with these nobles coming in to ingratiate themselves with Alexander. I can hardly ask Bagoas, when he will not even show me how he is easiest moving, and acts like it is a punishment rather than a favour.”

“He moves so gracefully, it can scarcely have wounded him. What have you had him do?”

“Only what everyone learns. When I can trust him to not stab himself when he startles I thought perhaps I’d start him with a kopis. He might look at me again as though I am a parrot stumbled into speech if I try so soon.”

“He hasn’t the height to make use of it. When he’s ready I’ll give you one of the Spartan xiphos my father started us on.”

“And you’ve carried it since for love of him.”

“It fits easiest under my pillow,” Hephaistion said repressively. “You must treat him as though he is eight or ten and has never been taught to fight. He has not, even if he is your age or thereabouts. Be kind.”

“I shall drill him like he’s Deinokratis,” Xanthos promised. “Though I might draw the line at bringing him honey cakes.”

**~*~**

In the weeks after that, he heard less. The boy danced and was beautiful, watched in the shadows as he put Alexander to bed and offered no help, marched with them east to Baktria as the country grew warmer. He had his work, and greater concerns pressing in.

Once, before they’d left Zadrakarta, Alexander said to him, laughing, when the others had gone after dinner, “If you want me to set him aside, there are easier ways than to send him to bed every night exhausted.”

“I do not want it,” Hephaistion said, slow with wine, and wondering. “He makes you happy.”

“He dances and he drills and then he can scarcely walk,” Alexander replied. “But he thinks it an insult for anyone else to care for me. I’ve had a bed brought to his practice hall for him, or he’d never sleep..”

Telling Xanthos the next morning, he met resistance where he’d expected relief. “He doesn’t lack for courage,” the boy said, chin lowered to his chest, shoulders up near his ears, a posture his mother would at once have known for a reluctance to inform on his peers and her brother thought merely mulish.

“He isn’t training for the army. I thought you’d be happy, to have your days freer.” To Menesthes, a scant four years younger, he might have thought of confiding his other fears, but Xanthos was his nephew in more than bare words. “You’ll tell him today.”

“He loves Alexander,” Xanthos said instead of leaving. “It is the only reason he hasn’t refused the practice.”

“You could throw a stone in this army and hit three men who love Alexander,” said Hephaistion, who had made a life of it. “Ask him again when we are on the move, he won’t be dancing then.”

**~*~**

Later he wondered whether Xanthos had known, had been on the verge of confiding in him, but that was a horse that wouldn’t race. No man in his senses would have spoken to his nephew of a plot against Alexander, and Philotas had been the sharpest of them, if vain and insistent of his prerogatives. Hephaistion had told the others, meaning it, that it would be easiest for him to pull the truth from Philotas, but they had known each other since boyhood as he had hardly known any of them, with the clear vision of dislike. In the dim deep dungeon of this king-house among the Zarangians he had reached the strange culmination of his fevered wishes in Mieza, with Philotas’ shouts fading to whimpers and rising again to a scream that clamoured breathlessly for life. He had looked for Alexander, after, and seen only his hair glimmering in the torch-light as he climbed the stairs.

In the afternoon after they had seen Philotas killed with the others, and Lynkestian Alexander who had not known but none of them could trust, he plucked Xanthos out from the crowd of pages clustered together and muttering.

“I didn’t know,” the boy said at once. “None of us did. Metron told us this morning. Hephaistion, how could he?”

“We are Macedonians; it’s nothing new. Tomorrow find Bagoas and ask him if he wants to train again. Start him slow, but teach him the drill of the light infantry; ask Menesthes to bring in his friends, if you need help.”

“He’ll know every step. I thought you were mad to want him to know.”

“I hoped it too,” Hephaistion admitted. “Teach him. I’ll make it right with Alexander.”

**~*~**

He left it a few days, hoping to beg forgiveness rather than asking permission if Alexander had turned protective. Meanwhile the boys trained, Xanthos an indefatigable miniature of his father and grandfathers, and Bagoas every day present, persevering. One couldn’t fault the boy for grit.

There was little time, hunting through the wastelands and little hills for trace of Bessos, to think of Bagoas or Alexander’s feelings, or anything save that his bed could have been softer and sooner reached. Riding home after a half-month, the bones of his wrist standing out from his flesh and every rib visible when he stripped, he fell into a hot bath, ravening onto dinner, and into bed with Demos’ hand firm under his elbow.

In the morning there was work waiting that carried him through the week. He had not wanted any share in Philotas’ power, but could not have had it all go to Cleitus, bearded and bristling, sole favourite of Philip’s old guard; Ptolemy, who could have had it had he chosen, had instead laughed and wished him joy of it. Hephaistion, who ought have known better, had been happy as a bridegroom, still hungry for any touch of Alexander’s trust. But it had not rescued him from the entrapping arms of logistics, only ensured that he spent his days in camp listening to the complaints of the commissary and the aspirations of engineers. A thick braid of paperwork hung between his desk and Alexander’s and the temptation to send along a note telling him it could all wait another day grew and grew nearly irresistible.

Respite came on the eighth day in the looming shape of Prince Oxathres, who liked to take him among his own people, the Persian lords Hephaistion suspected were with Alexander only because Oxathres had chosen him. It was only right that they should have their own leader, and Hephaistion was himself too pleased by Oxathres to think there was harm in it, or in him. Oxathres was a genial man, not uneasy in their camp as so many of even his handpicked supporters often were; he had been hard at war first for distant relatives, then for his brother, now to see justice done for his brother’s death. If Darius in his youth had been a man like Oxathres was, Hephaistion could see how he had come to the throne and held it. Of course it was not for the Persians as it was for Macedon scrabbling together kings from likely princes, but it must have mattered: his personal valour, his kindness, his great stature. He could not believe any son raised by Sisygambis had been always cowardly: Oxathres, no blood of hers, shared her iron-true spirit, hewing always to honour. Hephaistion had stood in the doorway watching him gather his nieces into his arms, kneeling before Sisygambis and pressing his forehead to her hands; there he had not grieved Darius, only Stateira the queen, who had been his full sister and full of the same desperate courage that resembled serenity to the untutored eye. Leaving the chamber he had been easy again, sharing trivialities in the most practiced fashion; it had been the first Hephaistion had seen of him, and had liked him instantly.

Just then he was full of plans of marriage, and lamentations that, having waited so long, he could not simply have Sisygambis arrange his harem. By Persian standards he would be marrying late, and his woman of many years was of too low birth to become his wife: for the youngest son of a minor prince of the Achaemenids she might have been a wife of lesser import, but for the leader of their ancient house she would not suffice.

Asked whether it would not create trouble for his bride—he did not mean to set aside his mistress, who had been his wife in all but name for a dozen years—he grimaced and said, “It is why I wish for mother Sisygambis, who was queen in her own household long before Darius was Great King. But Hutaosa won’t harm my wife, we have no children for whom she must fight, and she knows I will preserve her honours.”

“Would you have married her, had she given you sons?” He thought of Thais, left behind among the Zarangians to make her way to them when they had come out of the wastes, of Philotas’ woman who had been only too relieved to be rid of him.

“Of course,” Oxathres said, and looked as though he meant it. “She is of Kyros’ clan, from a house that kept faith with us. Her father was one of Darius’ friends, when they were young. If she gave me even a daughter I would place her above any other girls I marry.”

To a Macedonian friend he would have said, “you love her”, and shaken him by the shoulder, laughing. To Oxathres he said, “If you choose a timid bride she might like that she need not manage your household.”

Oxathres laughed. “I know you are a lover of men, but would your sisters have been happy thus? Would you yourself?”

Hephaistion shrugged confusion, and said, “Bagoas is of Kyros’ clan, you said to me in Zadrakarta.”

“He is. Hutaosa recognised him, in the streets of Susa. He has his mother’s face, who was a beauty when Hutaosa was a girl. It pleased my brother, as a favour for a friend who had died keeping faith,” Oxathres said, and sighed. “And then it pleased him for himself, as it now pleases your king.”

It was easier than he’d thought it might be, to keep in mind that he liked Oxathres. He had himself had similar thoughts and Alexander, who had wondered whether the boy knew refusal was permissible. He hung for a while looking for the words: Oxathres had Greek and he Persian enough they spoke alone together, wandering around the camp or riding some distance to be away from waiting ears. “Bagoas is a dancer, and Alexander has a great appreciation for all artists. But even were he not we would always have need for one so well-versed in the customs of the Persian court and so fluent in the language, willing to turn his knowledge to the good of the king.”

“It does not greatly concern me,” Oxathres said gently. “I am not his brother or his father, to ask that the boy be treated well. But it would sadden Hutaosa if he were to die, and the camp when I rode in this week was eager to tell me of the attack on the king and what caused it.”

“My sister’s son is teaching him Macedonian drill. If he is attacked he might be able to hold long enough for help.”

“He might,” Oxathres agreed, and proving that Hephaistion had reason to like him best beyond his manner and great stature, added, “I hear commiseration is due, for your increased burdens.”

**~*~**

He spent the next two days among the Companion Cavalry, reacquainting himself with old movements and learning drills that had been put in place while he had been absent on one campaign or another, and his nights with Alketas the Black, who had won them Tyre. They fell together almost as an afterthought, as they usually did.

Alketas, still complaining about the lacking material that stymied him and the engineer corps, said, “I have missed you,” and gently refused any suggestion that he had simply longed for a competent superior who would take his troubles into consideration. They were in his tent already, the first watch of the night shading into the second, Demos gone to sleep hours before while they sat arguing about new models for siege-towers over scraped-clean plates. It was easy to hold still while Alketas kissed him, and welcome to feel his body waking into desire under his hands.

In the morning he woke to Alketas scratching diagrams into the wax tablet he carried everywhere with him, with the light limning his massive shoulders and bristling curls. He could have sat for a statue of his patron Hephaestus, save both his thighs were thick with muscle, solid under Hephaistion’s hands as he took away the tablet and pushed him flat on his back in bed.

Meeting again for dinner with the other engineers he went painstakingly over details of how the siege-engines coped with the terrain, having been seen them used in fighting while they stayed in camp and speculated worriedly. Afterwards, when it would have been easy to smile and part, he followed Alketas from the engineers’ mess to his tent and had him again, spent the night with his head pillowed on the bellows-broad chest.

He never chose other lovers with an eye to imitating Alexander, but Alketas was a faithful reproduction of the other type: black of hair and eye, dark-skinned and coarse-haired, deep-chested with brawny arms. It could have been Philip, or Antipatros or his own father. Cleitus, if Cleitus had had any humour in him, or any trace of Alketas’ incisive mind.

They had met in Tyre because Alketas, sure he knew how to get Alexander what he wanted, and frustrated by his superiors in the corps who wanted a thing done as they liked if it was to be done at all, had decided to find and bend the ear of any of Alexander’s Companions he could find. By sunset he had been Chief Engineer, and in Hephaistion’s bed before the week was out. In another world he might have first found Peithon or Arybbas, or Demetrius, and Hephaistion would only have known him as the frowning man who pulled Alexander’s dreams into the world.

**~*~**

On the third morning, Menesthes came into his tent while Demos dressed him, and said, “I hear you are of a mind to give away our Grandfather Amyntor’s xiphos to the king’s Persian boy.”

“I heard you had your own and weren’t dangling after a child’s knife,” Hephaistion answered and waved Demos away, girdling his belt. “Does Xanthos think he’s ready for it?”

“Within a week, Xanthos says. I think perhaps a few days longer, but he can begin with a wooden blade. He moves beautifully.”

“He is a famed dancer.”

“Yes,” Menesthes said slowly. “I’ve been told that so often it seems people want me to forget in what his fame truly rests. But he imitates Xanthos very well, and he’s put on some muscle even if he’ll always be small.”

Hephaistion reviewed Bagoas’ usual mode of dressing that swallowed all his limbs, and his reluctance even with summer beating down to dress as the army did, and turned from his contemplation of his boots to stare at Menesthes with the vague dread that coloured too many of his conversations with his sister’s step-son. “How would you know that?”

“Felt him over,” Menesthes said. “How else? He won’t undress even to drill.”

“Persians are modest, you’ve seen that. If you turn into a rustic grandfather you’ll only shame me.”

“Fine definition of modesty young men have these days,” Menesthes said promptly in an old man’s quaver. “Extending it to whores dancing in nothing but ribbons.”

Even if he had not been there he would have known, it had been the best part of army gossip for weeks. But Menesthes had been at Hephaistion’s shoulder, watching Bagoas’ ivory body flashing through the scarlet and gold of his costume, and standing behind his couch at the following banquet while the boy went around to guests with gifts, love-limned and glorious like a gift of Dionysos poured into flesh. He was still unsure why Alexander had come drinking with them or later to his tent that night, save as a token of love; he was still unsure he would have done the same, in Alexander’s place.

He could say none of this to Menesthes, he had said none of it even to Alexander. “Do you miss your fields in Pindos so fiercely?”

“Tolerably bad. Peace, uncle, I’ve sense enough to keep a still tongue in my head before others. If the boy were Greek I would mock him louder.”

“Find some other target. He has more courage than most of the boys who serve Alexander, and better manners. Pound some sense into them, if you find yourself with so much time on your hands.”

“Ah, no,” Menesthes said, drew himself up from his easy sprawl. “I came to tell you Alexander asked you ride with him this afternoon. I have my work.”

**~*~**

He had had a horse from Alexander when they were young, dappled-bright and beautiful beside Bucephalus, not as strong or swift, nor as hardy. He had loved the horse, but more as a gift from Alexander than for itself. Later he had ridden what horses Demos thought would suit him, or chosen them quickly in fairs while Alexander took a day to decide on his. He liked best to have Alexander take him by the arm and lead him to a horse he’d chosen for him, to have a sign of Alexander’s love between his thighs. That day he had a pair of matched bays, scraggy and hardly taller than ponies, that liked the uncertain terrain well enough. It was the first he had been alone with Alexander since Philotas died. Alexander had taken it hard even if he had not wished it, poured himself into hunting for Bessos and suffered the worst of what the harsh land could fling at them.

He had wondered what he might say, but turned prosaic as always when faced with Alexander’s desperate searching look, the fire in him that wanted to be fed always with stories that he could turn true. “There’s a sheltered valley coming up soon. We can get away from this wind. A retiring people, the scouts say, and still no trace of Bessos.”

“The Valley of the Benefactors,” Alexander said. “They’re loyal to the Great King, named for a great service they did Kyros.”

No need to ask who had told him, with the link to Kyros. “Let us hope their loyalty is to the throne and not whoever’s on it,” he said, meaning it.

“The soldiers will be glad of the rest,” Alexander said, his gaze coming back to ground. “We lost two men last time who need not have died, but we outran our supplies.”

It was those deaths Alexander always minded most, ones he might have prevented if he were not always running to meet the next goal, exceed even his own bounds. He was tethered to the world so lightly, and only by love.

“I should be glad of it for you,” Hephaistion said. “Surely Bagoas will be also. He cannot be used to the speed at which you march.”

“After the months of drilling?” Alexander laughed, rode his horse close enough to mimic a shove.

“He goes of his own accord, without any dragging involved,” Hephaistion protested. “It’s more than I can say for most of our newest recruits. It might be more than I can say for myself.”

“I told him it would please me, and it does. He may never make a soldier, but it is better he know how to defend himself at need.”

“Eunuchs have marched before.”

“Well,” Alexander said, “with the Persian army. Your grandmother could.”

One of Hephaistion’s grandmothers had raised five children, nursed a husband, and ruled a fort in the fastnesses of the Pindos mountains; the other had served Queen Eurydice and thought their sons were soft and Hellenicised. The thought of them asked to keep relentless pace behind the ponderous Chariot of the Sun was suddenly the funniest thing he had heard in days. He laughed till Alexander laughed with him, till their horses grew restive and had to be reined in.

When they had stopped gasping he said, “But she would have adored Sisygambis,” and because he couldn’t lie with the thought of her hooded gaze and withered hands and withering tongue fresh in his mind, added, “and Bagoas. She would have loved him.” She would not have understood him, or known what to make of him, but neither did Hephaistion. It did not seem to be very much of an obstacle.

“You care for him.”

“He is yours,” Hephaistion said, trying to make the words mean _I am obliged to care_ rather than _and so he is mine, too_.

“When we come to the valley, pitch your tent next mine instead of all the way across camp. The engineers can do without your listening ear.”

**~*~**

The Valley of the Benefactors was for once every scrap as good as the stories about it, the land sheltered in the lee of the looming mountains as kind as its inhabitants: fertile and full of incautious animals. Alexander took one of his rare breaks and hunted so often they never ran out of fresh-butchered meat. The men hunted also, if at a more leisurely pace, and the camp took on a holiday mood.

Hephaistion worked in the mornings in his tent beside the royal enclosure, pushing to clear his desk faster than it could be filled, and in the evenings supped with Alexander. Ptolemy joined them some nights with Thais, comforting as his own sisters and, so many years after their weddings, better known. Bagoas waited on them, and could usually be persuaded to put his duties away and sit beside Alexander, eat with them. If on his best days in Mieza someone had asked what he wished his future would look like, Hephaistion might have spoken of nights like this, Bagoas’ presence a gold daric newly discovered in a familiar trove of jewels, unthought of and fitting. In the lamplight the boy was tinted ivory, love-limned, and Alexander shining gold.

At night he thought of that glimpse of them in bed in Zadrakarta, Bagoas bending down to catch Alexander’s mouth with his own, his hair falling down his back in a shining curtain, his arms around Alexander’s neck, and startled when Alexander himself came into his tent, cat-eyed in the dark and sure of his welcome.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, and leaning close kissed him as he sat on the bed.

Hephaistion put his hands on his waist and pulled him in, up, both of them fumbling to push away the blankets and Alexander’s cloak. It felt as though the moment had drifted up out from his idle thoughts, but Alexander was solid under his hands, warm from wine and laughter, and his eyes when he drew back from the kiss were still those of the boy who had never had love enough to satiate him.

“Don’t go,” Hephaistion said hastily, to forestall any inquiry. “I was dreaming of you, I think I might still be dreaming.”

“Have I left you alone so often you don’t know when you have me?” The next kiss was practiced, but Alexander’s had always been, and if it lit him up with desire, they always had.

“Since Zadrakarta,” Hephaistion said, and pulled his head back by the hair to kiss his throat till he was gasping, his hands wrenching at Hephaistion’s chiton. “Careful with the pins.”

Alexander was not, nor with his own clothes. They came off in a tangle, kicked off the bed as they moved up it, his cloak and the blankets the honoured fallen in the same struggle, Alexander laughing as Hephaistion tried and failed and tried again to lay hands on his bared skin, meeting fabric and tossing it away. It could have been any of their best nights in Mieza, Pella, on this long march swallowing years of his life, any of the palaces and camps where he had laid his head beside Alexander’s, laughing boys tussling and then something more, with Alexander’s thigh sliding between his and his hands tight on Alexander’s hip, the curve of his buttock, urging him on.

Afterwards he said, pushing Alexander off to the side, “As much an artless Macedonian as ever. I can’t think why there are such whispers; you haven’t changed since you were surprising me in trees.”

Alexander punched him in the shoulder and used the same hand to pull him closer in a single smooth movement. “If you want Persian fare you’ll have to look elsewhere,” he said, laughing, and finding Hephaistion had frozen, added, “’ _Tion_ ,” in a very different tone.

“Stay the night,” Hephaistion said in what he had always thought of as his nursemaid voice, groped the blanket up from the ground and wiped both of them clean, leaned out of bed to extinguish the lamp and back in full dark into Alexander’s arms, which closed about him like a vice. He had been longing for Alexander since Philotas died, or before it; this schoolboy bout had only honed the edge of his hunger, but they had to talk. “I do not blame you for it. I would be no friend at all if I grudged you what brought you joy.”

Alexander pressed fervent kisses to his shoulder, the side of his neck, the thin skin behind his ear, and muttered, “I love you,” with the air of a child who knew he could not smooth troubles over by that declaration, but was determined to try.

It illuminated the dark. He had not grown up as Alexander had, watching his mother turning to conspiracy, to witchcraft, to violence, to keep his father’s love, then her position, then his; he had never been taught that love was finite and could vanish any moment. But he had watched Alexander, triumphant and laughing and tremulous with anxious tears, forever trying to make a bridge of himself between his parents, torn between his stubborn loyalty to Olympias and his growing sympathy for Philip, never trusting that love would last from moment to moment. When they were boys Alexander had told him, meaning it, that there would never be another, and now there was. Eros was a god, his grip inescapable, and Alexander had no notion of how to reconcile his new fever with the old love that had grown with them like a well-watered tree.

He turned and took Alexander in his arms. “We have sworn our vows, at Ilium, at Siwah, in our hearts which the gods know well. There have been others before this, who have caught my eye or yours, who have been in our beds. It has changed nothing for us.”

“I love him,” Alexander said. In just such a wretched voice he had been used to confess that his mother had hurt him, that he no longer trusted his father.

“Half Persia knows it, and all the army. He is loyal and lovely, of course you love him. What do I lose by it?” He rubbed Alexander’s arm till it lost its whipcord tension. “I have as much of your love as I ever did, I have your trust, I have you in my bed,” he said, running a demonstrative hand down the length of Alexander’s back, and using it to hook his thigh more securely over his hip. “You could hardly give him my work.”

“And if I did you’d be thankful,” Alexander grinned. “Don’t think I don’t know how little you like it.”

“I am convinced Philotas aided the conspirators to avoid you ever knowing how little he did of the work he ought. But Alexander, listen. I lose nothing, if you look at Darius’ boy or Darius’ daughter or Darius’ mother, as long as you still look at me. If you stop looking, no let me. Then I lose you and nothing else. What does Bagoas lose, if he loses your love?”

“You’ve thought about this,” Alexander said, sombre again.

“I have had to. He has no family, no trade he would be happy to resume, no friends whom we know of. He was taken from his family young, one has only to look at him to know it: if you set him up in some estate near Susa or Persepolis he could hardly manage it.”

“He is a dancer, and worthy of his crowns and accolades.”

“It does not make old bones. I told Oxathres we would always have need of a translator. If he did that for more than love of you, he might have his own position at court and in camp. You’ve said he’s learning Greek, if he finds it to his liking there are ten officers who could use his help any day.”

“Another ploy to keep him from my bed? 'Tion,” Alexander said, and pressed smiling closer, “you may have me in yours without schemes.”

“And you may have him in yours without doubt or worry that he comes to you without choice. Alexander, I wish you joy of him. You must not think that I...” Impossible to speak to him of Olympias. “I am not Persianised enough for such plots, if I wished a man dead I would slit his throat.”

“Or break his bones to make him talk. I know. Peace, I will tell him tomorrow that he need not attend upon me, but apply himself to this new task. Perhaps he will even listen; he does not when I tell him to not set his hands to servants’ work.”

“His father died in the year they killed Prince Arses. He cannot have been older than ten. Since then he’s been bought at market. Are you surprised he acts as he does?”

“I am surprised you have thought so much about him,” Alexander said in a tone that made him very glad for the enveloping darkness. “I hadn’t thought you had the time.”

“It’s habit, to worry about you and yours.”

“He’s ours.”

“Alexander.”

“What do I lose, if you look at Bagoas, or he looks at you? I have your love, I have your trust, I have you,” he said, and set a hand on the back of Hephaistion’s neck and pulled him close. “I have you in my bed.”

**~*~**

One of Oxathres’ men had a birthday and turned thirty-three. In the Persian fashion he threw a party that seemed flat and dull to all the Macedonians invited, but pleasant enough to linger in as wine replaced the sweet-course. Oxathres as a mark of special favour placed him at his side and he found his store of Persian had grown enough to talk to the celebrant without shaming himself. It was more than could be said for most of the other Macedonians present; even Alexander stumbling over a word here and there and frowning at himself: Oxathres’ lessons, untouched by love, had proceeded further and faster than Bagoas’. It would be better for the boy to keep his knowledge for others and go to Alexander with an unveiled love.

In the morning Alexander came into his tent and said he had found out Bagoas’ birthday, and that it had passed. Though he could not have remembered his own sister’s birthday, or he had not known it well when they were young and that seemed unlikely to have altered, he felt the lack of this greatly. Bemused at first, Hephaistion came to understand that it wasn’t his own ignorance that had touched Alexander but the generality of it; it would not soon become easy knowledge that Bagoas had been little better than a slave since he was snatched from his home. It was in Alexander’s nature to wish to elevate that which he found good, without asking whether others, unnoticed, might be as deserving of attention.

Hephaistion himself was different enough to have kept them safe through the least of Alexander’s mad flurries of liking something or someone, spoken in repressive tones and presented the unwelcome idea that there might have been some reason for neglect Alexander was overlooking. For Bagoas he found himself wondering whether any of the things he had found over the years and kept, thinking of his sisters, or his niece, might not be suited for a gift. He had an eye for Persian tastes, and had given Oxathres’ man a vase carved from a single amethyst that had been well-received. Its twin in turquoise sat on his stand of curiosities, and might serve for perfume or eye-paint.


End file.
